Word: truths
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...singular or plural when discussing his love affairs, now faces an audience no longer naive about presidential double-talk. Thus when Clinton sat down with Jim Lehrer on Wednesday afternoon and repeated, in heavily lawyered cadences, that "I didn't ask anybody not to tell the truth," reporters pounced on the use of the double negative as another linguistic trapdoor. Try as it would, the White House could not seem to manage a believable denial...
...morals section of D.C. local law. It's a cluster of federal statutes, lumped under the rubric "obstruction of justice," that could spell trouble. As a former law professor, Clinton would have no problem parsing their legalistic references to "knowingly" doing this and "corruptly" doing that. But in truth they all boil down to a principle so basic in post-Watergate Washington it might as well be printed on the license plates: It's not the crime, it's the cover...
...precise words. If the two men just gave her general advice to be discreet--not advising her about what to say in a deposition--it would be perfectly legal. Even if they were referring to the deposition, it would depend on how specific the advice to misrepresent the truth was. "It's not suborning perjury to say you shouldn't volunteer something," says Northwestern University law professor Paul Robinson. There are reports that Lewinsky said on tape that the President told her, "There is no evidence, so you can deny, deny, deny." But you are allowed to urge a witness...
...soon. If it got to that point, he would be under powerful pressure to step down. "The Democrats would force the President out before it got that far," says George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg. "They would not allow him to take the party down with him." The truth will likely emerge soon. "This is not Iran-contra or Watergate--it's not that complicated," notes Saltzburg. No, it's not. When a fuller picture emerges, Clinton's case will be decided in the court of public opinion long before it finds its way into a court...
...have a government that can get to anyone. Everyone has something embarrassing to hide. When we aren't all dealing with a President we're ready to string up, this unfettered intrusion may be what haunts us most. What a Hobbesian choice: lie and face prison or tell the truth and face public humiliation. The perjury follows, even though the act--reprehensible though it might be--did not flow from official duty. No one should lie, but Big Brother shouldn't ask. This all comes by way of a prosecutor who before he took the appointment was ready to file...